joulemathRTX 4090: rent price, power cost and payback
Short answer: on November 6, 2026 one RTX 4090 rented for a median $0.43 an hour on Vast.ai (64 offers) and $0.34 on RunPod Community. SaladCloud listed $0.16 (Lowest) to $0.44 (High). Renting yours out keeps roughly $96 a month at US power and $38 at EU power. A used card still sells for about $2,300 to $3,100, so buying one just to rent it out takes years to pay back.
Specs that matter for the money
| RTX 4090 | |
|---|---|
| Total graphics power | 450 W |
| Required system power (PSU) | 850 W |
| Idle power | 19 W |
| Average gaming power | 315 W |
| Memory | 24 GB GDDR6X, 384-bit |
| CUDA cores | 16,384 |
| AI TOPS | 1,321 |
| Launch price | $1,599 (Oct 12, 2022) |
Specs: NVIDIA RTX 4090 page, read Oct 29, 2026 (idle and gaming power are NVIDIA's footnoted test figures). Launch price: NVIDIA newsroom RTX 40 Series announcement. 24 GB is the number renters care about: it decides which AI models fit on one card.
What renting one costs, per hour
| Where | Date | Price per GPU-hour | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vast.ai marketplace, all offers (low / median / high) | Vast.ai public API, Nov 6, 2026, 11:12 CET | $0.14 / $0.43 / $0.53 | 64 rentable on-demand single-GPU offers (API returns 64, the cheapest sample) |
| Vast.ai marketplace, verified hosts only | Vast.ai public API, Nov 6, 2026, 11:12 CET | $0.29 / $0.44 / $0.53 | 28 of the 64 offers |
| RunPod Community Cloud | Page "Updated November 4, 2026", read Nov 6, 2026 | $0.34 | On-demand pod, 24 GB |
| RunPod Secure Cloud | Same page | $0.89 | Pod in RunPod data centers |
| RunPod Serverless, 24 GB 4090 tier | Same page | $1.10 | Billed while a worker runs |
| SaladCloud, Lowest priority | Read Nov 6, 2026 | $0.160 | Batch tier, can be interrupted |
| SaladCloud, High priority | Read Nov 6, 2026 | $0.440 | Not preempted by other jobs |
These are what renters pay. Our Vast query: rentable, not rented, on-demand, exactly one RTX 4090, ordered by price. The API returns at most 64 offers, so the median is of the cheapest sample. Vast is a live market, so these move by the hour. Earlier snapshots: Oct 21 GPU rental prices.
See live RTX 4090 offers on Vast.ai (affiliate link, we may earn a referral fee).
What it earns if you rent yours out
Hosts get less than renters pay. Two real numbers:
- Salad: RTX 4090 machines averaged $0.2428 per switched-on hour for Oct 30 to Nov 5, 2026, idle time included. The middle half of machines made $0.210 to $0.277. A job was running 96% of the time (Salad earning rates, data file earning-rates.json updated Nov 6, 2026, 09:08 CET / 08:08 UTC).
- Vast.ai: you set your price. Vast says renter prices are "typically about 25% above what hosts earn" (Vast.ai host earnings article). So the $0.427 median renter price is roughly $0.342 an hour to the host, only while rented. Vast does not publish occupancy.
Power cost per hour
| Power price | Card only, 450 W | Whole PC, 600 W | PC, 30 days at full load |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0.10/kWh | $0.045 | $0.060 | $43.20 |
| US avg $0.1816 | $0.082 | $0.109 | $78.45 |
| $0.25/kWh | $0.113 | $0.150 | $108.00 |
| EU avg $0.3168 | $0.143 | $0.190 | $136.88 |
450 W is NVIDIA's total graphics power. 600 W for the whole PC (card plus 150 W) is our assumption. US average residential 18.16 cents/kWh, August 2026 (EIA Table 5.6.A). EU average household €0.2832/kWh, H1 2026, 2,500 to 4,999 kWh band, all taxes (Eurostat nrg_pc_204), $0.3168 at the ECB rate of 1.1188 on Oct 26, 2026 (ECB). $0.10 and $0.25 are round reference points.
Net per month after power
| Scenario | Gross / month | Power used | Net, US power | Net, EU power |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salad, average week | $175 | 432 kWh | $96 | $38 |
| Vast, rented 50% | $123 | 252 kWh | $77 | $43 |
| Vast, rented 80% | $197 | 360 kWh | $131 | $83 |
Method (ours): 30 days. Salad: $0.2428 × 720 hours, PC at 600 W every hour. Vast: $0.342 host rate × rented hours, 600 W while rented, 100 W idle (our guess). Rented share is our assumption. Before card wear, internet, platform payout fees and tax.
Payback if you buy a card to rent out
Used RTX 4090 prices, all from US eBay data:
| Source | Date | Price | What it measures |
|---|---|---|---|
| Get PC Parts | Week to Oct 24, 2026 | $2,271 | Average sold price (90-day average $2,435) |
| PCPrice.Watch | Oct 29, 2026 | $2,436 | 90-day sold median, 90 sales (7-day median $2,778) |
| GPU Sold | Updated Oct 29, 2026 | $3,093 | 14-day sold median, 112 sales |
| rackbites | Oct 29, 2026 | $3,011 / $3,514 | Live asking prices: low end / median, 42 listings |
The trackers disagree because they filter sales and windows differently, and the recent ones run higher. The card launched at $1,599 in 2022. We use $2,436 and $3,093 below.
| Scenario | Card at $2,436 | Card at $3,093 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US power | EU power | US power | EU power | |
| Salad, average week | 25 mo | 64 mo | 32 mo | 82 mo |
| Vast, rented 50% | 32 mo | 56 mo | 40 mo | 72 mo |
| Vast, rented 80% | 19 mo | 29 mo | 24 mo | 37 mo |
Payback months = card price ÷ net per month from the table above. Inputs and method are ours. It assumes you already have the rest of the PC, rates stay flat, and the card is worth nothing at the end. A used 4090 still resells for real money, so the true picture is better than this; a rate drop makes it worse.
Short version: if you already own a 4090, renting it out is extra cash on top of a card you paid for. Buying one just to rent out is roughly a one-to-four year bet on rates holding up.
Rent one or buy one?
If you only need the GPU for AI work, $3,093 buys about 9,097 hours on RunPod Community at $0.34, or about 7,244 hours at the $0.427 Vast median, before you pay a cent of power. That is about 9 to 12 months of nonstop use. Owning wins if you also game on it or keep it busy for years.
Rent out vs mining, per kW
A 4090 is not a Bitcoin miner; Bitcoin runs on ASICs. The fair comparison is what a kilowatt earns. A 600 W 4090 PC on Salad at $0.2428 an hour grosses about $9.71 per kW per day. A kW of Antminer S21 XP (13.5 J/TH, Bitmain) grosses about $2.34 a day at the current hashprice. Hashprice $0.0316 per TH/s per day, computed November 11, 2026 at 11:52 UTC from the mempool.space API: BTC $74,003, difficulty 148.36 T, average reward 3.1447 BTC per block over the last 144 blocks.
The GPU kW wins on gross, but it costs about $5,155 in used cards per kW and depends on someone wanting the card. An ASIC earns every hour it is on. More on both in the rent out your GPU guide.
machine_id in Fleet Check to see live occupancy and 36-month net returns. Stored only in your browser.Open the per-kW calculator Benchmark Vast.ai machine ID
FAQ
How much does it cost to rent an RTX 4090?
About $0.14 to $0.89 per hour for one card. On November 6, 2026 the Vast.ai median was $0.43 across 64 offers ($0.14 to $0.53), RunPod Community Cloud listed $0.34 and Secure Cloud $0.89. SaladCloud's interruptible Lowest tier is $0.16.
How much can an RTX 4090 earn if I rent it out?
Salad's 4090 machines averaged $0.2428 per switched-on hour for Oct 30 to Nov 5, 2026, about $175 a month. After power for a 600 W PC that is about $96 at the US average price and $38 at the EU average.
How much power does an RTX 4090 use?
NVIDIA lists 450 W total graphics power, 19 W idle and 315 W average while gaming, with an 850 W power supply. A whole PC at full load is about 600 W, which costs about $0.109 an hour at the US average of 18.16 cents/kWh.
How much is a used RTX 4090?
About $2,271 to $3,093 on US eBay in late October 2026, depending on the tracker: $2,436 90-day sold median on PCPrice.Watch and $3,093 14-day sold median on GPU Sold. It launched at $1,599 in 2022.
How long does an RTX 4090 take to pay back by renting it out?
At Salad's average rate and US average power, a $3,093 card takes about 32 months and a $2,436 card about 25 months. At EU power it is roughly 64 to 82 months. Our math, before resale value.
Does a rented RTX 4090 beat Bitcoin mining per kW?
On gross revenue per kW, yes: about $9.71 per kW per day on Salad versus about $2.34 for a kW of S21 XP at the current hashprice. But the GPU kW costs far more hardware money and only earns when someone wants it.
Related: H100 rent price per kW · A100 rent price per kW · rent out your GPU · mine vs AI calculator · all calculators · GPU defaults and sources · ASIC profitability by model.
Prices change constantly; this page is updated by hand, last on November 6, 2026. Used-card prices below are still the late-October reads. Nothing here is financial advice.